39. Anastasia #2
Pulling up, I cut the engine and get out with my heart drumming in my ears.
The night is so still and quiet. Normal, but my anticipation finds it eerie.
There’s a black car that should host two officers on watch, but it’s empty.
I ring the buzzer and it only takes a few seconds for the entry to unlock. Expecting company. Expecting me.
I don’t call out; instead my footing is light as I strain my hearing to pick up on any sign of movement. Down the hall the kitchen light is on, and I head for it tentatively.
My tension slams to shock when I round the corner.
“Matthew?” I say, but it sends chills down my spine to acknowledge his presence.
“Hello, Ana,” he replies coolly.
I want to be relieved he’s here, but what should be a friendly face chills me with fear.
Nina sits at the kitchen island, shrinking into herself with a tear-stained face.
“She looks so much like you,” Matthew says, tipping Nina’s brown hair over her shoulder, which causes so much terror to cross her face that I turn sick with it. “Or at least she used to.”
“What are you doing here?”
Bile rises in my throat. I don’t recognize this man who looks over Nina like she’s a glass doll, so familiar to him.
“Let her go,” I say vacantly.
He doesn’t know Nina. They never met.
“I have every intention of letting her go,” he says, straightening and slipping his predatory eyes to me instead. “Now I have the real thing. I’ve waited too long for you, Ana.”
I can’t believe what he’s saying. My mind fits together pieces, but they’re so grim and wrong, the most outlandish conclusion for the brother of one of my best friends, the son of my father’s vice president... yet it’s so glaringly obvious with what’s right in front of me.
Matthew leans in close to Nina as if he relishes in the whimpers he lifts from her. My fists begin to tremble tightly at my sides, itching for my gun.
“I want you to run to Ana’s home, but don’t let yourself be seen. Go to Archibald Kinsley and tell him he has two hours to come for his daughter before she starts arriving to him in pieces.”
“No!” I object.
“Yes, my dear.”
I gasp at the new voice to enter the kitchen through another gap in the wall.
Gregory Forbes walks in with a remote expression I don’t recognize. Not the warmth of a father I’m used to.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask in defeat.
This can’t be happening. Not Gregory Forbes, my father’s most trusted advisor. His vice president who’ll be sworn into office with him. Nothing makes sense right now.
“You have a lot to understand, Anastasia. This is between your father and me. Truly, I am sorry you had to be used for this. I hope you believe me when I say my fondness for you is genuine. But your father stole everything from me, and I am not going to live in his insufferable shadow.”
Nina whimpers by the door. “I’ll stay with you,” she says, so brave and timid, and my heart cracks for her. She’s been through enough at the hands of these horrid men.
I step over to her tentatively and Matthew watches me like a hawk. I don’t know if he has a gun, but he allows me to reach my friend, and I pull her into an embrace.
“Go. I’ll be okay. Don’t go to my father, Nina—get to safety,” I whisper.
“But—”
“Please don’t make my father come. He’ll kill him.”
“He’ll kill you.”
I squeeze her, praying she’ll do as I say. “I’ll be okay,” I repeat.
Watching Nina run out of the house is both a relief and a frightening dawning that I’m alone with the vultures at my back.
“Sit, Ana,” Matthew commands.
“You fucking sit, you sick bastard.”
His eyes flare wildly, and I’m seconds from pulling my gun with the near lunge he takes for me.
“Matt . . .” Gregory warns.
That halts him. I’ve never heard his name shortened before.
“Matt,” I repeat.
Because I have heard the name before. Rhett spoke of it.
“Matt Heizer,” I whisper with the weight of the world crushing me.
His slow smile is twistedly amused as I figure it out. Though it doesn’t make sense ... Is it just a prop name to sway the likes of Xoid off his tracks?
“You’re a smart girl, Anastasia,” Matthew marvels.
“Why use Balenheizer’s name?”
“Because he’s my real father.”
I wish I’d taken the seat he offered now because the ground doesn’t feel so steady beneath me. My mind starts to go back. It scrambles to try to figure out how I could have missed it. He had a different hair color from Liam, but that didn’t seem like enough when his mother has the same red hair.
“My father, the infamous Damien Balenheizer, married my mother and had me. But when I was ten he met someone new, better. Balenheizer doesn’t like loose ends and planned to kill us both to start a new life free of burden. My mother managed to escape with me.”
“And I found them,” Gregory cuts in. “Gave them new names and fell in love with my wife. Then we had Liam.”
So corruption runs in Matthew’s blood from his real father. It doesn’t explain Gregory’s vendetta against my father.
“You put the hit out for my father all along?” I ask him.
Gregory says, “It was for you, in fact. Your father was always going to be surrounded by too much security and eyes, but you were wandering freely. Going to school, out to parties. It was too easy, but the timing was everything. Now, with your father elected, it’s time for him to be put down and let me take his place. ”
“That’s all it’s for? Power?”
“Power is everything. There is no man who doesn’t strive to hold as much of it as he can.
You know he went to college with Rolf Sullevan.
I was in their classes too, you know. I was the kid who never got invited to those parties they bonded over.
I watched them at the university. They were so alike it was easy to see they’d both chase the same paths, but I never could have predicted how closely.
I followed Kinsley to D.C. I admired him greatly and wanted to prove to myself I could be as good as him.
Yet he continued to best me. We both ran for senator, you know.
Of course, the people voted him in and he laughed it off with me, joked I could be his vice when he took office one day.
That arrogant asshole deserved to be put in his place, and so I languished on the idea.
Got close to him until his comment made in superiority became our reality. ”
I can’t believe it. But keep your friends close and your enemies closer, right? I’m thinking of doing the same damn thing with Alistair. Same gamble, different game board.
My father never would have suspected him. Rhett did at some point, but the Forbes excellently swayed the trail onto the Sullevans. The competitor with an obvious motive.
Gregory was fueled by jealousy and power.
“So the Heizer alias was just to cover up your despicable affairs,” I spit at Matthew.
Matthew’s smile is viciously proud. “Of course. I took a lease from Sullevan under that name. He never knew it was me nor what the house was used for. Then Gregory came to me with a request ... if I would be able to set Sullevan up to take the fall for what he wanted to do, and if I could get my real father to take the job of assassinating him. But, you see, Balenheizer isn’t into this kind of shit.
He wouldn’t have a gain in getting his hands dirty assassinating the president when he’s wealthy beyond his means for generations to come. But I knew of someone else.”
“Alistair Lanshall,” I say. I’m so cold where I stand.
He nods. “I work for Alistair. I’m in charge of getting his cargo to their buyers.
So I went to Lanshall first, and he put a hit out for you on the dark web that turned up a few eager takers for the job, but none of them made it close to you.
Then when Rhett Kaiser was known to be by your side we didn’t have any more interest. Turns out this guy has made something of a reputation for himself.
Alistair said he was taking on the job personally from then, but he practically kicked me out of my own plan to use you to lure out Archibald Kinsley.
It made me curious, and you can imagine my surprise realizing a criminal like Kaiser had managed to infiltrate the strict defenses your father had in place already.
It is no small or easy task, and I guarantee anyone else who tried that route would have failed.
I knew Kaiser was trying to find out who was behind the hit and I had to get him off my trail.
It was perfect, really, as I was already planting what I needed for Sullevan to take the fall for your father’s assassination.
So I planted the papers in Sullevan’s hotel room at the debate, which led Kaiser to the stop house.
I didn’t expect him to find Nina and kill two of my men.
That was an unfortunate, irritating mess I had to clean up.
Alistair would have come after me for the losses, so I burned that house to the ground so Sullevan could claim insurance, and I had to come up with another plan. Another powerful alliance.”
I know who comes next, and this is like some fucked-up dark horror story featuring everyone I know. Everywhere I’ve been. For the past few months.
“Before that, I couldn’t help having a little fun with you.
I didn’t mean to cut off all your stunning hair, though I might like this look on you better.
I sent what I cut to your father. He’s been aware of the threat this whole time, but I hoped he’d let Kaiser in on it too when I left a special message for him. He didn’t see it for weeks. A shame.”
I already know most of this, but Rhett didn’t tell me about the hair, which drops the idea in my gut that he could have kept more from me.